[ReformationFan]

Good article. When one controls the vocabulary and definitions, one controls the debate.

[Fungi]

Danniel Hannon has his head on straight. Thanks for posting.

[gattaca]

ping

[kaehurowing]

“Alarmed, I tried to explain that the world was an altogether cheerier place than Orwell, writing in 1948, could have imagined.”

Really? I think it’s worse.

[Kickass Conservative]

He who controls the Language controls the Argument.

[Talisker]

Twelve is far too young to properly understand 1984. All it can possibly do is create exactly the kind of despair in a child he observed in his daughter.

[bluejean]

Orwell, Bradbury and others were quite prescient regarding what govt’s would do with technology to oppress, control, and rule. They missed foreseeing in some ways what the free market side would give us - smart phones, internet everywhere, video gaming, etc. However, I never forgot Bradbury’s interactive TV walls, and we’re essentially there. Or the smart home in “There Will Come Soft Rains” - seemed fantastic in the 70’s but now - it’s here.

So what’s left of the free market provides bread and circuses, endless silly entertainment, while the damned totalitarians are robbing us blind of everything that truly matters using the same technology. And then there is cyber warfare - a whole ‘nuther beast threatening us all continually as we’ve become utterly dependent on our technology. Those old sci-fi guys weren’t too far off the mark. Strange times indeed.

[aquila48]

Bookmark

[kvanbrunt2]

Income used to be wages. (the Derivation of interest/dividends can Be taxed)
Vehicle used to be an automobile. (Vehicle transports something and can be taxed and regulated — no right to travel)

[9thLife]

But though everything on earth has declared war on the individual, “God calls each of us by name.”

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I have my own Newspeak-English dictionary:

objective :

reliably promoting the interests of Big Journalism. (usage: always applied to journalists who are members in good standing; never applied to anyone but a journalist)

liberal :

see "objective," except that the usage is reversed: (usage: never applied to any working journalist)

progressive :

see "liberal" (usage: same as for "liberal").

moderate:

see "liberal." (usage: same as for "liberal").

centrist :

see "liberal" (usage: same as for "liberal").

conservative :

antonym of “objective"

right-wing :

see, "conservative."

society

government (a meaning which Thomas Paine rebutted in Common Sense in 1776)

[backwoods-engineer]

My twelve-year-old recently finished George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. When I asked her whether she had taken any lessons from the book, she airily replied, “The individual is powerless, so there’s really no point in trying.”

Funny, that's exactly what I got out of it. And, I think Heinlein said the same thing in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," though in a different way: "...all fools who are so impractical as to think they can fight City Hall."

Thankfully, I think our modern world has empowered the individual more than Orwell or even Heinlein could have foreseen. But at the same time, government is now capable of oppressing any given individual in ways Orwell or Heinlein never imagined.

People don't really change; advancing technology allows us to do more good or more evil to one another.